I had vague recollections of trillium growing in Campbell Valley regional park (which were confirmed by me looking back at our Flickr photos from 2008), and seeing as I was out that way I decided to head over and go look for them. For once I remembered to put in the tripod and I was determined to actually use it too!

I took this shot with our Nikon D3200 – and yes, on said tripod – and I have to admit I’m really pleased with it, so much so that it’s actually restored my faith in our SLRs. I’ve been getting a bit fed up with our SLRs lately as I’m convinced the newer 18-55 doesn’t work too well on our (aging) D5000, our 55-200 has probably been dropped one too many times, and the D3200 doesn’t focus as reliably as the D5000. On top of that, our little Sony RX100II has been superb – when it’s in focus, it’s really in focus, and the image quality is great even at 100%. Plus it fits in a pocket. (I’ve probably taken more photos with that camera over the past year than with the SLR.)

Ever since we bought the D3200 I’ve felt that it’s been a simultaneously under- and over-specced camera. Under-specced in the sense that the number of focus points is small (leaving huge gaps between focus points), and over-specced when it comes to the 24 megapixel sensor. The problem with having 24 megapixels is that the camera has to be held really steady for it to be sharp at 100%, and for the most part, we shoot handheld and often in relatively poor light. Couple that with the uneven performance of the ultrawide Sigma 10-20 mm and we often came home with mis-focused, blurred, or otherwise less-than-sharp images. The best thing going for the D3200 is that it is light, and that we can occasionally get good enough shots to print quite large (36×12 and 20×16 are our largest so far).

And so it was with a little trepidation that I mounted the 18-55 on the D3200 and took it out flower-photographing. Even with the tripod, my hopes were not especially high. But I have to say that in addition to all the usual crappy shots I took today, when the camera got it right, it absolutely nailed it perfectly. My aim was to come home with one photo I was happy with: I have at least 3 to choose from now. Any issues I had were really more down to the fact that it was raining, so I couldn’t take too much time, and that the tripod was too short and too fiddly to get some of the compositions I was after (I only had my GorillaPod).

My only complaint with getting today’s shot is that a tilting screen would have really helped get the composition right. That and a new pair of eyes that can focus on something less than 2 feet from my nose…! I should probably also get an umbrella to shield the camera from the rain too.